kwk 38 cannon or machinegun

[chuckfourth]

Claus said:
Exactly how these numbers were reached, I dont know. As has been pointed out several times, they may have been made by different OOB designers for different reasons over time as the game developed and the logic behind the differencies may seem rather fuzzy by now. In any case, these are the actual numbers that we are dealing with.

As chief apologist for these phantom OOB designers you should know that these changes all came into place after v6 of the DOS version. The logic is that the weapon was now to be treated an anything other than a main gun, whether mounted in either a tank or an armoured car. The weapon is now forced to be used an an oversized machine gun or as an AA gun. The problem is that these secondary roles have been interpreted as its main function and then modelled incredibly poorly, making the weapon virtually useless, ie because it could fire bursts it now has to always fire bursts. This is about as sensible as modeling MG34 as a rifle because it could fire single shots.

Claus said:
- The 10-round magazines were loaded with an equal amount of AP and HE, alternating the rounds.

I would like to see a reference for this statement I would think the magazines would contain either HE or AP. Even if this is true and using sdkfz 222 as an example its ammo loadout should be 45 HE and 45 AP not 10 HE 10 AP. And in any case HE is not totally ineffective aganst Hard targets and AP still puts a hole in a soft target so to model bursts a number somewhere between 90 and 180 would be appropriate. The crew would certainy vary this if they found they were running out of ammunition anyway.

Claus said:
- Combat reports from France in 1940 suggest that since the 2cm gun wasn't very effective in penetrating most French tanks, the preferred method was to fire bursts against them. That would often rattle the crew sufficiently to have them surrender or bail out (but did not result in penetration, apparently).

Would you be able to share these combat reports with us Clause? Firstly when the weapon is mounted in an armoured car which has bumped into french armour the response is to get the hell out of there and report it, not engage in a pitched battle that cant be won, And for the panzer II in a panzer regiment, again best to go round this sort of opposition rather than get shot up, leave the french tanks for the infantry AT or pz III or better. Not forgeting these french tanks were encountered peicemeal.
In any case This is a rare occourance and so doesnt justify modeling bursts, These vehicles are far more likely to meet other similarily thinly armoured reconnaissance vehicles in this case it is more useful to fire single shots.

Claus said:
- Same combat reports speaks of bursts being fired against enemy anti-tank guns.

Still probably more accurate to fire single shots at about one a second than just pump off the entire magazine. This allows enough time for the firer to gauge the effect.

Claus said:
So a single-shot weapon with 180 rounds would be just as wrong or right as a full-auto weapon with only 20 rounds.

No because no one fires 9 round bursts. Also modeling single shots works fine, However modeling bursts is a failure resulting in the weapon taking a massive performance drop.

Claus said:
It would seem to me that the armoured cars armed with the Class 5 weapon should be similar to the tanks, while I guess you could make the case for the Class 19 weapons firing 9 round bursts by virtue of the their AA-capability. Firing against planes, they would likely try to get as many rounds into the air as possible.

Again replacing the weapons primary function with its secondary function resulting in a huge performance loss. How often did these vehicles fire at aircraft ? considering that in the first half of the war germany pretty much had air superiority wherever they were, And the weapon is in reconnaissance vehicles not likely to be targeted anyway. In the second half of the war when enemy air was a problem, the 234/1 appeared, I notice you have convieniently missed out the ammo loadout for 234/1, its 480 rounds. Perhaps by this time of the war the AA capability of the weapon was becoming important enough for bursts to be fired and hence the appropriate larger ammo loadout. ie when these guns did begin to be used regularily as AA they were given the correct ammo loadout to do so. note also the 250 replaced these armoured cars on the eastern front and had the smallest loadout, however germany could still gain local air advntage on this front for attack when these reconnaissance vehicles were busiest.

Claus you have suggested some very limited and highy specific examples where bursts may be appropriate but in the vast majority of cases single shots are more apropriate, thats the real world
In the game forcing bursts results in a seriously underperforming weapon for no gain, disadvantages being:
Only one AP round in each burst actually has an effect.
The number of soft targets that can be destroyed is seriously reduced.
When firing single shots each successive shot is more accurate, with bursts you cannot track on to targets this way and waste vast amounts of Ammo doing so.
Any comment on these 3 points Claus or am I correct in these statements?
Regards Chuck.